


Shir HaShirim

by AxmxZ (Boanerges)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medieval Medicine, Monks, Romantic Fluff, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23631856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boanerges/pseuds/AxmxZ
Summary: 10th century. A trading caravan is waylaid by bandits on the road to Toulouse. The sole survivor, Natan, is dumped on the doorstep on Saint-Sernin monastery and put in the care of a young monk with an old soul.((faceclaims: Nick Kroll for Natan, John Mulaney for Martin))
Relationships: OC/OC
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

”Brother Martin, I hear no acquiescence.”

The boy remained obstinately silent as he stood with his face lowered and almost hidden under his cowl. 

“Well?”

“Father, if it please you…” the boy muttered.

“It would please me to have you, for once, do as you are told without backtalk!” interrupted the prior. “I have arranged for the cellarer to bring you linens and water, candles, and a Psalter. As the guest is unable to care for himself, you are to give him his meals.”

“Am I to cook them as well, father?” asked the young man. It might have seemed an innocent query to someone who did not know him, but to the prior, who had struggled to tame this unruly spirit for almost two years, it bespoke utter insolence. 

“Saints forbid,” the prior replied. “We are to welcome our guests as Christ himself, for he himself said: ’I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ I will not have a welcome under my roof be followed by a poisoning.”

The boy’s mouth twitched under the cowl; his full lips thinned briefly, as though suppressing a smile.

“Off with you,” grumbled the prior. “The man is in a bad state. Brother Guillaume has done all he could in suturing and bandaging him, and in preparing poultices. All is in God’s hands now. If he takes a turn for the worse, summon brother Guillaume – or myself, if he takes a turn for the eternal.”

“Yes, father.”

“You will continue to be excluded from the oratory and the common table. You are to take your meals unblessed with the patient. And you are to sleep in his cell.”

The cowl drooped even lower, covering the boy’s mouth and even chin. 

“Go now, brother Martin,” the prior said, softening his voice. “Take this penance and bear it with humility. For if exclusion from the company of fellow men weighs so heavily, how then will you take exclusion from the light of God into which sin threatens to plunge you?”

* * *

The first thing that Natan heard upon breaking through the haze of feverish dreams was a voice. It was either the voice of an old woman, he thought, or a young man, and it was attempting to sing.

Natan groaned.

The voice ceased abusing the pentatone.

“You are awake,” it said in good Latin.

A young man, Natan decided. 

“Where am I?” he asked, also in his best Latin.

“You speak!” exclaimed the young man. “You are awake and you speak. And you speak Latin, and not any vulgar tongue! _Mirabile dictu.._.”

Natan cracked open his eyes. He seemed to be lying in a small room of bare stone with no windows. The only light in it came from a short thick candle in the corner, and even that hurt to look at.

He tried to sit up and groaned in pain. 

“No no, do not do that!” 

The voice sounded very near now, and Natan found himself lowered back to the pallet by two large cool hands.

“You are very ill yet,” said the voice, murmuring next to his ear and tickling it lightly with warm breath. Natan decided that he liked the voice. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

Natan tried to remember. “No,” he finally said. “We were two days’ journey from Toulouse… no, one day…”

“Do not tax yourself.” A large cool hand placed itself upon Natan’s burning forehead, making him moan in relief. “It will come when the time is right. Sleep now. I shall watch over you.”

A moist cloth began to wipe fever sweat from Natan’s brow.

“Bless you,” he croaked to the voice, wishing he had the strength to take the hand ministering to him and place a kiss on it.

The cloth paused, then resumed. “Do not bother blessing me,” said the voice peevishly. “Father Daniel saw it fit to declare me unblessable.”

* * *

Natan’s next awakening was more complete. No daylight broke through his dreams, but the candle flame was now augmented with an oil lamp.

Natan opened his eyes, took in the bare stone walls and floor of the tiny cell, and let his gaze travel to the figure slumped over the writing pulpit in the corner. It was a monk, asleep with his face in his arms. The lamp on the table flickered feebly, unextinguished. Sleep must have overtaken him unexpectedly while he was copying the manuscript on the pulpit: two of his fingers were smudged black, and the quill lay by his head in a small puddle of ink. 

Natan attempted to sit up once more but found his movements constrained. After a few moments of confusion, he realized he had been thoroughly bandaged. Strips of linen were wound across his chest, shoulders, and torso; several more were layered thickly around his arms. 

It came back to him then. The attack upon his convoy, the screams of his manservants, his bodyguard ordering him to flee, but how could he? Mercenaries and men of his household alike were falling under cudgel blows from brigands. And so instead of jumping on a horse, he drew his blade and threw himself into the melee, slashing and kicking, until someone jumped on his back and grabbed his arms…

Natan fell back onto the mat, panting as though freshly from the fight and fighting back tears.

The monk at the pulpit stirred, then stilled, then turned around suddenly. 

“Where are my men?” husked Natan in the dank silence of the room.

“I do not know that,” answered the monk.

“Did any… did any of them live?”

“You were the only one brought to us.” 

The monk slid off his high seat and walked over to Natan’s pallet. He was a tall thin fellow, dark haired, with narrow wide-set eyes whose color Natan could not tell in the meager light. At first sight, he looked to be a beardless boy; however, the top of his head almost brushed the ceiling.

“Where am I?” asked Natan. 

“You are at the abbey Saint-Sernin,” said the monk. “Under the care of the Benedictine order, as represented by yours truly.”

He reached behind Natan’s head and brought out a clean cloth and a bucket filled with water.

“You were brought to our doorstep,” he continued, moistening the cloth in the bucket and passing it with care over Natan’s forehead and face. “Perhaps by well-wishers, or perhaps by your very assailants.” He re-dipped the cloth into the bucket and moved on to the neck. “Provided we allow for a possibility of their conscience re-awakening. Whoever it was, they left you unshod and nude, save for some shreds of an undergarment.”

The young man desisted in his ministrations and put the cloth away.

“I shall have to re-dress your wounds,” he said apologetically. “It will likely hurt. It always has before – you flinched away, even though you did not wake.” 

“I’ll bear it,” said Natan, watching the monk unwind and tear fresh strips of linen. “How many times have you done this already?”

“This will be the third time. You have been here eight… no, nine days.” 

“Nine days!…” Natan attempted once more to sit up. “God, nine days… I must write to my father at once!..” 

The young monk held him down. His hands were long-fingered and delicate, with only a scribe’s callus on his forefinger. Ten days ago, Natan could have broken his hold with little effort.

“I shall write to him on your behalf,” said the monk in a tone that admitted no argument. “You will dictate to me.”

Natan laughed feebly. Unconsciousness was claiming him once more. “Can you write in Hebrew?” he muttered.

“I can,” said the monk with a hint of smugness, as he removed the used up lint from the roughly sutured gashes. “Stop worrying. Sleep and get well.”

“Bossy little thing…” muttered Natan. The boy reminded him of a wild fawn from his father’s estate. Every year they would come, skittish at first, then bolder as they grew used to seeing Natan read or play chess with his tutor under the purple blooms of the jacaranda tree. Until eventually they would hardly spare him a glance as they nibbled at the flowers around him. 

“I shall call you Zvi,” muttered Natan as the boy began to re-dress his wounds. “Zvi, a little deer…”


	2. Chapter 2

“Assure my good mother…”

“…My good mother…’” repeated the boy, carefully tracing the letters of Hebrew script from right to left. 

“That I am safe and in good health… Many thanks be to God… may He reunite us in the best of circumstances and perfect happiness…”

“…’Perfect… happiness…’” 

Natan could swear he saw the boy’s tongue poke out of his mouth with the effort.

“Unless I am smothered with a pillow by the boy placed in charge of me,” he added cheekily.

“’Unless… I am smothered… with a pillow… which is no more than I deserve… wretched snorer that I am,’” said the boy in the same tone as he pretended to continue writing. “Well! Now I am certain you will live," he added in Latin.

He replaced the quill in the pen-stand, turned to Natan, and began to stretch and rotate his wrist. “The dying rarely have the strength to mock the living. How shall I sign it?”

“Natan bin Yehuda. And your own name, of course, since you are my amanuensis.” 

The boy sighed. “I have forsaken my given name upon entering the monastery,” he said. “I am now called Martin. In honor of the bishop of Tours and the uncle of Saint Patrick.” He signed the letter.

Natan yawned. Every little thing, whether it was sitting upright to use the chamber pot, or drinking a glass of goat milk, or dictating a letter, sapped his strength. “Thank you, lad.”

“’Lad’!” Martin snorted. “I am nineteen.”

“Nineteen!..” sighed Natan. “A man’s estate, truly. I was nineteen once...”

“In the days of Deucalion,” needled Martin.

Natan fell asleep with a smile.

* * *

When Natan opened his eyes once more, he was alone in the room.

He sat up, shivering a little in the cold of the cell, searched for and found the covered chamber pot near the pallet, and answered the call of nature. He felt hunger now – a good sign, surely. 

He looked for shoes on the floor, before remembering there were none. Neither was any clothing – not even his undergarments, what there was left of them, he thought humorlessly.

He was wondering whether he could just walk out of the room wrapped in the thin blanket, or whether it would scandalize the holy brothers, when the door opened and Martin walked in.

“How is my patient this fine afternoon?” he said. 

“Is it afternoon, then? I cannot tell day from night in this prison cell,” said Natan. 

The boy frowned. “It is no prison. You are free to walk out of here any time you please. I should however advise you to wait until such a time as you can, you know. Walk.”

Natan laughed hoarsely and coughed, doubling up on himself. The spasms pulled at the stitches along his ribs, making him groan with pain.

"What have you been up to, little deer?” he asked the boy as he settled back into the pillow on his mat.

“Inquiring after laundry,” said Martin, all business. “Though the brothers are interdicted from chatting with me, I asked for the abbot’s dispensation on your account and received it. In consequence, brother Thomas will collect your linen soon. You have been here nigh two weeks. It is high time for a wash of the bedding. Are you well enough to go outside, do you think?”

“Very much so,” said Natan. The idea of leaving the tiny cell, with its stench of sickness, was very inviting, and to be leaving it while leaning on this boy, perhaps with his long arm supporting him…

Martin nodded. “I found you some garments,” he said, and for the first time, Natan noticed the bundle in his hands. “The cellarer was reluctant to part with them, especially the shoes. You would think they were made of embroidered Chinese silk rather than goat-skin.”

The shoes were somewhat snug. 

“I do believe he chose this particular pair to keep you from running off in them,” Martin said glibly as he helped Nathan dress and rise. To his amazement, Natan, no small man himself, found that his nose only came up to the throat of his caretaker. 

“Where do you come from that you are so tall?” he asked as they made their way slowly down the corridor towards bright daylight of the arcade around the inner courtyard. 

“Hibernia,” the boy said laconically. His arm was wrapped round Nathan’s waist. Natan fancied he could feel its heat even through his bandages and the tunic he was given to wear over them. 

“A lush and verdant place, I hear.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” said the boy, his focus entirely on the small steps they were taking together over the stone tiles. “I grew up in a noble household in Toulouse.”

Natan frowned. “What occasioned the move?”

“The purchase of my mother at a slave market,” said the boy grimly. “The cub came with the dam.”

Natan stopped and looked the boy fully in the face. His narrow eyes looked sleepy, but Natan could see now that he was being watched with the utmost sharpness.

“Forgive me,” he said. His right hand found the boy’s left in its grip around his waist and pressed over it lightly. “I did not mean to stir up bad memories.”

The boy looked at him with some surprise. Then a blush came over his high cheekbones. 

“It is of no importance,” he said. “I have no memories of it, truth be told. I can only remember myself among the Franks.”

Martin turned his face away. But as he did, Natan felt the fingers under his hand open and intermingle with his own. His heart sang.

“How came you to be a monk?” he said, now almost in a whisper, for fear of ending the sweet moment.

“My master thought to secure his salvation in the Kingdom of Heaven by gifting me to the monastery,” said the boy. “Along with a finger-bone of Saint James and two thorns from the Crown of Thorns. For three years, I was a servant. Then I took the tonsure."

Sadness gripped Natan’s heart. His hand tightened over the boy’s.

“Come sit with me?” he asked timidly. They were now in the open and sunny courtyard, bounded by the stone arches of the arcade. 

“And you?” asked the boy when they were seated side by side. Some strange instinct bade them avert their eyes from each other, though their hands remained intertwined. “You asked that I give your letter to the rabbi of the Jews of Toulouse. I sent it along to him. But I still don't know whence you hail."

“I hail from Al-Andalus." Natan sighed. "From Cortuba, if you know it."

The boy’s eyes widened with excitement. They were blue, Natan saw now. Not the common light blue of the southern Franks, but dark blue, like blueberries.

“I hope it does not offend your religious sentiments to have me here,” he said. "You must not have much occasion to care for Jews."

The boy raised his pert little nose. “Offend! You must take me for an ignorant ass. Besides, was our Lord not also a Jew?”

“Only on his mother’s side,” said Natan without thinking. 

For a beat, they were both silent. Then they collapsed against each other, overcome with the giggles.

* * *

“…onward through the County of Comenge, and thence through Aragon. And thence onward to my father's estate in Cortuba.”

“What business brings you so far from home?” asked the boy with audible awe.

Natan laughed out loud. “Far! This is not far. I have been on the road for thirteen months. I have paid visits to relatives in every land from here to Alexandria, where my sister Rachil has given birth to my seventh… no, eighth nephew.”

“Only to fall prey to highway robbers a mere thousand leagues from home,” said the boy dryly.

“Practically on my own threshold,” said Natan, shaking his head, then began to laugh again.

An old monk making his way down the arcade turned his head towards the sound of their laughter and glowered at them. Natan fell silent, suddenly conscious of the fact that he and the boy sat in something very much like a friends’ embrace, hands intermingled, and were laughing together. 

How long have we been sitting here? he wondered. The sun was low in the sky, and the columns of the arcade cast long shadows across the courtyard vegetable beds. He was conscious now of pain in his chest and arms, of hunger and thirst, as if awakened from a magical sleep by the glower of the elderly monk. 

“Come on,” said Martin, rising slowly, as if with reluctance. "Back to bed."

Natan obeyed. He liked obeying this boy, he found, as a man might like obeying the charming whims of his pretty new bride.

None of that, thought Natan, forcing himself to cease thinking along these lines. You have been ill-used in a strange land and are now lying half-dead being looked after by Christians. Now is not the time to look for love.

When will it be time to look for love, then? asked a small voice in his breast. It was a voice that had been growing more and more insistent as he grew into a man. For a good decade now, he watched all his older brothers and sisters court and marry and bring forth children. And when will it be my turn, his heart asked. But he had no answers to give it, and no one to ask for wise counsel.

They made their way back slowly to the cell Natan was beginning to call theirs. Martin helped his patient back onto the pallet, now with fresh sheets replaced by one of the servants, and retreated to make his own bed by the opposite wall.

"I thought all monks slept, ate, and prayed together," said Natan as he watched Martin unroll his mat. "Don't mistake me, I enjoy your company. But why aren't you with the others?"

In lieu of an answer, Martin bared his teeth and hissed out something Natan did not understand - presumably a Gaelic curse.

* * *

Natan awoke to Martin pressing his hands over his temples. 

“Wake up, my friend,” he heard. “You are safe. It is but a dream.”

Natan tried to speak but could only cough. 

“You were screaming in your sleep,” said the boy. He was about to lift his hands from Natan’s face, but Natan gripped them in his own.

“Stay,” he whispered fiercely, not knowing himself what he was asking. “Stay…”

“All right,” whispered Martin. “Wait.”

He came back in a minute with his mat and thin woolen cover.

“I didn’t think you would be feverish any longer,” he said, laying down beside Natan and putting his hand to his forehead. 

“I am not,” said Natan. “I just run hot.” 

“I run cold,” said Martin. “Even in the summer.”

Natan watched him struggle to wrap himself in his short thin blanket. It was a Sisyphean task; as long as the boy’s feet were covered, his shoulders were not, and if he was covered up to his neck, his feet were bare.

“Here,” said Natan. “Let me.”

He sat up, arranged his own blanket over Martin’s legs, and pulled the boy close, so that his face was tucked into Natan’s shoulder. 

“Better?” he asked. 

“Worlds better,” murmured the boy into Natan’s bare throat. “Most nights, I cannot sleep for the cold… it gets into my very bones…”

Natan stroked his soft, straight hair. “Sleep now,” he said. 


End file.
